We're back again with plenty of great blogs! Next week we will be on hiatus again, but we hope that gives us and you plenty of time to enjoy the holidays!

Community Blogs For December 14 – December 20:

My Nine Favorite Games I Played at PSX 2017 Justin Mikos gives us a play-by-play of the games he played while at the PlayStation Experience. I kind of forgot about Guacamelee!, and oddly enough, started replaying it this week, so was excited to read about it here. However, I am a little nervous based on what Mikos wrote about the more frantic elements meant to accommodate four players. And Wattam looks pleasantly insane.

2017 has been a long year. The longest in my life, it's felt like. I've woken up a lot of mornings, made coffee, and then read one headline after another, each leaving their dizzying, devastating impact. Possible war on the horizon. Discrimination in spades. The continued downplay of the dangers of climate change. The death of one of my heroes. A bevy of personal, medical, and emotional issues haven't exactly made things bright and sparkly. If I were superstitious, I'd tell you there's something wrong with this year. That it's cursed, rancid. A year of anger and distrust and fear.

We're back again with plenty of great blogs! Next week we will be on hiatus again, but we hope that gives us and you plenty of time to enjoy the holidays!

Community Blogs For December 14 – December 20:

My Nine Favorite Games I Played at PSX 2017 Justin Mikos gives us a play-by-play of the games he played while at the PlayStation Experience. I kind of forgot about Guacamelee!, and oddly enough, started replaying it this week, so was excited to read about it here. However, I am a little nervous based on what Mikos wrote about the more frantic elements meant to accommodate four players. And Wattam looks pleasantly insane.

I was in the hospital waiting for my daughter to be born when a bombshell of news hit: Disney had just purchased Lucasfilm for $4 billion, and the Star Wars saga would continue with Episode VII in a few years. My mind was already a mess, hoping everything would go as planned for my wife and daughter, but now I had strong Star Wars thoughts creeping in. I was throttled by a chaotic symphony of emotions: “Oh god. I don’t know how to be a father. Luke Skywalker is probably coming back! My wife is amazing. I need to tell her that. Will Chewbacca's hair be grey?”

I told my wife that the universe was a cruel place, and I may be a weirdo for the next couple of hours due to Star Wars. She was quick to state that she didn’t want to hear it. Roughly 15 minutes later, she entered the final stages of labor, and our daughter was born two hours after that. I somewhat jokingly told her we should name her Leia, given the news that hit, and she debated murdering me.

In those moments of becoming a father, the Star Wars thought that I didn’t let go of was, "Will I see Luke Skywalker again?" He was there through most of my childhood, and I realized he may be for my daughter's too. I believed he would be the focus of the next film.

For many indie developers, bringing their game to Japan presents several new headaches and challenges. Dangen wants to change that.

Launched in April and comprised of industry veterans with years of experience across marketing, translation, and game publishing, Dangen Entertainment was created with the intent to aid indie developers looking to expand their games’ audiences with a Japanese release. While there are micropublishers available in Japan to make this possible, it is often difficult and costly to find one willing to take a chance on new or unproven titles.

Even when an indie title is accepted, how the game is marketed by these micropublishers can be its own gamble. Some smaller titles are released with little to no marketing, crippling potential sales.

For many indie developers, bringing their game to Japan presents several new headaches and challenges. Dangen wants to change that.

Launched in April and comprised of industry veterans with years of experience across marketing, translation, and game publishing, Dangen Entertainment was created with the intent to aid indie developers looking to expand their games’ audiences with a Japanese release. While there are micropublishers available in Japan to make this possible, it is often difficult and costly to find one willing to take a chance on new or unproven titles.

Even when an indie title is accepted, how the game is marketed by these micropublishers can be its own gamble. Some smaller titles are released with little to no marketing, crippling potential sales.

Once again it's a special edition of The Sports Desk, featuring Matt Bertz and myself chatting about the year that was in sports video games as well as what's coming. We also cover hot topics like microtransactions and the current lull in GM/Franchise modes that plague many of this year's editions. Where's Kim? Alas, she couldn't make it!

Crafting the audio for a video game is never easy, but Mega Man is a game set in a future where life-like robots battle for the fate of the world. This means almost the entire soundtrack is created from scratch. At the same time, Mega Man 11 is the first game in the franchise to utilize real-world sounds for its audio backdrop, so we asked audio director Ryo Yoshii to walk us through his creative process.

Yoshii has worked for Capcom for several years on franchises including Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and Dragon's Dogma, but when he first started work on Mega Man 11, he encountered a problem he’d never faced before. In the past, all Mega Man’s sounds were created digitally, so how could Yoshii take sounds from the real world and incorporate them into a game set in a fantastical future?

“Because the visuals have been updated, it’s a more 3D look and a little more realistic, we figured that incorporating previous sounds wouldn’t jive well with the visuals,” says Yoshii. “We didn’t want there to be a disconnect, so we felt that in order to match the visuals we needed to make sure that the audio was a little more modernized. We didn’t want to just use synthesized sounds. We wanted to mix it with Foley work to create a more authentic sound.”

A year and a half removed from its original release on Xbox One, I am prepared to say that Inside is one of my favorite games ever. I universally recommend it to everyone, even if you‘ve never played a video game in your life. It’s a great example of the kind of experiences the medium is capable of delivering and is absolutely gorgeous. Its release on iOS is good news because it means my universal recommendation can now be delivered nearly universally. If you have an iPhone, you can experience Playdead’s masterpiece. That’s great news, but the mobile platform is not ideal for platformers, or any type of game where you control the movements of a character in an action setting, which begs the question: How is Inside on iOS?

The short answer is it’s pretty good, but this is far from the best way to play. Inside’s focus is atmosphere above all else, and that element translates perfectly to iOS. With headphones, Inside’s impeccable sound design comes through flawlessly, and its visuals and animation have not been scaled back in any way for mobile. It looks just as good here as it does on every platform – maybe even superior, considering your iOS screen may be better than your television or computer monitor. Playing with headphones in bed in a dark room, I found my pulse quickening the same way it did when I played it on a television.

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